For this week's Visiting Artist's Talk at the University of Leeds we welcome Izzie Beirne.

Izzie Beirne (b.1996) is a UK, London based artist from Newcastle Upon Tyne. Beirne studied her BA (Hons) Fine Art at Leeds Arts University (2019) and her MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths University in London (2023). Beirne was recipient of The Almacantar Award and studio residency (2023) and has been shortlisted for several other awards including the upcoming Mosaic Award in February 2025. Beirne has exhibited in the UK and internationally with galleries including Guts Gallery, Twilight Contemporary, OHSH projects and Plan X gallery.

Beirne primarily works with painting, but has also presented works in ceramics, sound and film. Film is deeply rooted in the process of Beirne’s practice, through her manipulation of cinematic imagery. Recent work takes reference from The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989) by Peter Greenaway. Beirne utilises the film’s graphic, violent plot to work through feminist themes of sexual violence, societal ills and imbalances of power.

Bodies when painted are sliced and cropped, leaving frenzied hands and ghostly figures sweeping across the canvas. Beirne views this series of paintings as a way to build narrative, each piece adding to the larger puzzle at play. Depicted are the remnants of social settings; glasses discarded, doors left ajar with darkness beckoning and alluding to tropes in horror. Beirne’s painting technique plays into these narratives, using heavily blurred paint to create a dreamlike, nightmarish state. This distortion brings the paintings full circle, creating a painted lens through which scenes are viewed, harking back to the medium of cinema from which the paintings take reference.

About the Visiting Artists’ Talks series

The Visiting Artist’s Talk (VAT) series hosts talks by an exciting range of arts practitioners from around the world every Monday afternoon 2–4pm during teaching weeks.

All of our talks are compulsory for our Fine Art students but are also open to anyone else who would like to join us.

Full details about this week's talk including venue information.